1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to postal delivery systems and, more particularly, to postal delivery systems that provide electronic delivery of business documents.
2. Background Information
In the course of everyday business, parties enter into contracts and supply and receive goods and services on the basis of these contracts. The parties to these contracts need to be certain of their rights and obligations within the contract and the parties may wish to record activity under the contract so that each party is clear on the status of the contract. In addition, each party may wish to rely on the recorded activity in the event of a dispute between the parties. For these and other reasons, contracts are often committed to paper and a copy is provided to each party. Also, for these reasons, a concise record of activities within the contract is often committed to paper and a copy is provided to each party to the contract. This activity paper is often called “Transactional Paper” and is often viewed as a formal record of the date and time that a contractual event has happened.
This method of recording and creating a copy is balanced in favor of all parties to the contract and each party can refer to a complete record of activities in the event of a dispute. In the case where the parties to the contract are adjacent at the time of the event, a copy of the paper record is transferred by hand between the parties. In the case where the parties are not adjacent at the time of the event, a copy of the paper record may be placed into an envelope, addressed and delivered over a “Postal Network.” When transactional paper is sent through the Postal Network it is often called transactional mail or business mail.
For transactional mail, the Postal Network is often seen as an efficient way to communicate a large volume of business documents between a large number of addresses in a secure manner. It consists of a known number of collection points, which may be located close to the entities or natural persons that generate the transactional mail, and a known number of delivery points at which the legal entities or natural persons are located.
It is this combination of concise transactional recording of contractual events, i.e., the creation of copies for each party and an efficient and universally available secure distribution system connecting contractual parties, that makes transactional mail a globally acceptable means of communicating for business. It is equally available to all and allows all parties to operate independently and in a disconnected manner.
Postal systems within the Postal Network perform the functions of collecting mail pieces from, for example, dedicated post boxes, business premises, post office windows, and so forth, routing the mail pieces to postal system sorting centers and distributing the mail to recipient mail boxes, businesses, and so forth. The mail pieces of interest are business and transactional correspondence, such as letters, invoices, account statements, contracts, and so forth. These mail pieces are paper that must be handled at collection, routing and sorting, and distribution operations, adding considerably to the overall cost of the mailing. Another important consideration is the environmental impact of so much paper.
Certain businesses, such as banks, utilities and so forth, may provide user account information on-line for viewing by the user. The user must request access to the information separately from each of the respective businesses and, once permission is granted by a given business, the user is permitted access to information that remains solely under the control of the given business. This business-controlled access method may be anticompetitive by not delivering data to the user for independent access and use, and/or by combining relevant transaction information with other data such as information about services offered by that business or related business, and so forth, to obscure access, or by providing data in inconsistent forms, and thus, preventing the user from accessing and moving the data out of the control of the business.
Further, the businesses may provide certain information to the users by email, though firewalls and other email system constraints affecting, for example, attachments, may disrupt the communication in a manner that is not discernable by the sender or the intended receiver. In addition, adequate security for such email communications is often lacking, such that it is not advisable to send sensitive information in this manner. Also, email is a person to person form of communication and is thus not particularly well suited for communication with a legal entity in a manner that is consistent with the recording of a business transaction. Further, it is not easy for businesses to distinguish, within their email systems, between contractual communications with customers and personal communications with customers.
For these and other reasons, the business and transactional correspondence are not generally handled electronically. Indeed, even when electronic communications are utilized during a transaction, paper confirmation copies are exchanged via the Postal Network as the transaction record.